The Night Before

I love teaching HypnoBirthing. That's why I spend so much of my life doing it. I love knowing what a difference it has made to people's lives.

However, I don't love the night before a course. The floor is covered with folders being made up. The photocopier is red hot with duplicating handouts. I've loaded the car with folding chairs, TV, cushions and boxes of books. And usually there's a lot of midnight oil being burnt.

But it's all worth it on the day.

Summer HypnoBirthing

Today's HypnoBirthing class had an added bonus. It was a private class for a mother whose baby is due in two weeks' time, and it was the most beautiful sunny day, so at lunch time we took a break and sat outside at a pavement cafe in Primrose Hill enjoying the sunshine.

I've had two more lovely HypnoBirthing birth reports in the last couple of days, so I'll either add them to the website or post them on the blog (or both) in the next few days. It gives me such delight to hear the birth reports from mothers I've taught, and I know couples who are thinking of doing the course enjoy reading them.

Different View of Health

Most of my life is spent looking at what makes a healthy and gentle birth through HypnoBirthing. On Friday I spent the day taking a slightly different view of health by attending the 'Energy 4 Exmoor' symposium run by the Exmoor Trust at Ralegh's Cross. It was a fascinating day, with lots of useful information on the viability of various forms of generating energy. There was an excellent presentation by Mukti Mitchell on reducing your carbon footprint while still maintaining your lifestyle, and a fascinating talk by Prof Sir Ghillian Prance, former director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, on conservation.

It really struck me how the principles from which I work in HypnoBirthing, apply in these other areas as well. Altogether a refreshing and inspiring day.

Learning from Lambs

At the beginning of April the field behind my cottage was full of ewes in lamb. They were about to be moved to another field as the grass was getting very low, when one night the first one lambed. It was a freezing cold night, and when I awoke in the morning the flock was at the far end of the field where the farmer fed them every morning, and the one ewe that had lambed was at the end near my cottage right up by the hedge, far away from the rest of the flock, with little twin lambs huddled underneath her to keep warm. She had quietly separated herself from the flock during the night, and given birth at a time when sheep, being diurnal animals, are not normally active. All mammals will naturally give birth at a time when they can be alone, unobserved, and away from their peers. It was a time and place that she felt safe. We could learn a lesson from that ewe. How many mothers travel across town in labour, to go to a strange place where they feel nervous and where they are observed by many strangers? A recipe for a difficult labour.

And there she stayed. She moved very little for several days. She didn't go to feed with the rest of the flock. She simply stayed quietly in her own little enclave, sheltering and feeding her lambs.

The farmer also knew from experience what works best. He moved the rest of the flock to a different field where he had intended the lambing to take place, but he left the one ewe and the newborn lambs undisturbed. He knew that, if he interfered, he would disturb establishing feeding, and the ewe's supply of milk, and the ewe might reject her lambs.

As far as giving birth is concerned, we are simply another mammal. What works for other animals works for us too, and we would do well to remember this.

Last Minute Arrival

No, it wasn't a baby. It was my arrival at this evening's HypnoBirthing class in Wiltshire. Having worked in London in the afternoon it seemed that a 4pm departure from London would give me plenty of time to reach the Wiltshire class this evening. But an accident on the M4 involved a detour around Wokingham which added an extra hour to the journey and I arrived at the class with timing that would have done justice to Phineas Fogg, at exactly 7pm.

Fosbury Discovery

We had a slight emergency at the Fosbury course last week. No, it wasn't that one of the babies arrived during the course. It was simply that I usually hold the course in my cottage and the sitting room accommodates a maximum of four couples. I live in the depths of the country and, though it's easy to get to from towns like Newbury, Andover, Marlborough, Swindon and Hungerford, there are very few people who live within five miles, so this system usualy works very well. Last week four couples had booked onto the course and then, at the last moment, two more wanted to come.

I wanted to find somewhere which is a pleasant place to be and close to where I live so that the people who had booked already would not be inconvenienced. Church halls came to mind, but they're generally lack atmosphere, but then I had a brainwave. I remembered that there is a lovely converted barn which is available for hire in Shalbourne. It's set back from the road in a delightfully quiet position, with views over open countryside. Perfect!

Fortunately they were free so, after last minute emails and phone calls to make sure that everyone knew about the change and didn't turn up at my cottage wondering where I was, we all met at the barn at Westcourt Farm. It was idyllic; spacious and quiet. Perfect for a HypnoBirthing course and, now that I've found it, somewhere that I shall doubtless use again when numbers are two big for my cottage.

Lunchtime Coincidence

Very often we decide to have lunch together on the second day of a HypnoBirthing course so that everyone can get to know each other better and maybe want to keep in touch and meet up after the babies are born. Yesterday we all went out for a light lunch near the Union Jack Club where we were doing HypnoBirthing. There was a table of 19 of us including 9 very pregnant women. Next to us was a group at another large table, and they all seemed to be couples who had small babies.

So on one side there were the pregnant women and on the other were the mothers with new babies!

It raised as smile.